Sometimes it only takes one picture. In 1990 I was at the Museum of Modern Art viewing John Szarkowski’s final show, “Photography Until Now” when I was stopped in my tracks by the last photograph in the show – a small but luminous 8 x 10 inch print on printing out paper of three young girls in bathing suits looking shyly at the camera while behind them, in the distance and out of focus, a teenage boy observes the proceedings. The picture was so visceral in its textures, so full of incipient narrative, and so intelligently composed, I knew this had to be the work of a brilliant photographer and without seeing one more of her pictures, I tracked her down and offered her a show.
All this economy mayhem with layoffs and cities panicked makes me all the more poised to snatch up Michael Wolf’s The Transparent City. I love the mix of private and public. Plus, the press release invokes Edward Hopper and Blade Runner.
Some call it the gravy train, the gift that keeps on giving. To others, it’s a load of crap, and they cuss it. Every day it piles higher, this avalanche of music that arrives in tastemakers’ offices across the country, requiring both thoughtful efficiency and a cold-hearted detachment to conquer. The gravy train, it just keeps rolling along, pulling a bottomless trough of free music delivered to journalists, radio programmers, music supervisors and entertainment editors. Filled with new CDs — advances of forthcoming releases, full-art copies of fresh music, box sets from major labels, CD-Rs from budding bands looking for a break — each unrecyclable mailer is its own little plea.
The result, which has already been widely hailed as Rourke’s career-capping/redefining/resuscitating turn, is a characterization of rare intensity and pathos that bristles with the lived-in authority of someone who knows what it means to live with his back against the ropes. “I’ve seen this side of life. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this side of life,” Rourke sighs. As you watch the Ram onscreen — reduced to working the deli counter of a New Jersey supermarket after a heart attack takes him out of the ring, playing the electronic avatar of himself in an ’80s-era Nintendo wrestling game — the line between performer and performance all but disappears. Finally, we’re left with the sense Rourke has always given in his best work, of an actor who so thoroughly immerses himself in a role that he isn’t merely playing the character but living it, moment by moment, from the second he gets up in the morning until he goes to bed at night.
Could you please stop tearing apart my record so loudly? I just put my special needs child down for a nap. You remember my poor, Down syndrome baby, don’t you? The developmentally disabled child I carried to term despite knowing that he had special needs? The child who would be helpless without my constant care and attention? Well, he’s just nodded off, and if you continue to provide such damning evidence of my inexperience in both foreign and domestic policy, you’ll wake him.
Radio Silence is a selected visual history of American Hardcore Music. Compiled by authors Nathan Nedorostek and Anthony Pappalardo. The book is published by MTV Press and distributed by PowerHouse Books.
If Kodachrome should vanish, “we’d either change to a different type of film or do it digitally,” Link says, but long-term studies that hinge on image consistency might suffer.
Alarm bells have been ringing since Kodak exited the film-processing business in 1988. One by one, its Kodachrome home-movie and still-film formats have been discontinued, and only a 64-speed remains. (Film speed is a measure of its sensitivity to light; low-speed films require a longer exposure).
An even slower 25-speed version departed in 2002, an equally beloved 200-speed in 2006, a Super 8 movie stock in 2005 — all supplanted by standardized films far easier and cheaper to process.
We imagine that there won’t be many other bells and whistles, but really, who needs them? Once the exposure and focus are set, everything else about a RAW image can be tweaked in post. The price? Seriously, don’t ask. You’re sure? OK. €30,000 for the body, which translates to $45,000.
I just landed after a 15.5 hour flight into Hong Kong so I thought my first post report from China should be the background as to how this project came into being. Since many of you desire to publish your own books, you might find some useful info in the posts over the next few days.
Photokina opens today with a number of exciting new product announcements. I will not be attending this year because of a timing conflict with my just-concluded Botswana safari / workshop. Instead I’ll be sitting back, comfortable though jet-lagged, watching the passing parade just like everyone else.
This page will be updated continuously (when I come across something interesting) during Photokina week, so check back here from time to time, though most major announcements are made either just prior to or in the first couple of days of the show.
You’re going to see tons of flashier features in other write-ups, and of course I’ll cover them here, but for this cycle I want to lead with the little stuff–things you might not read about otherwise, but which can make a big difference while working
Last week I went to the opening of the new shows at the ICP museum but as always with openings it was difficult to take in the work properly, so today I went back to check them out, specifically the Susan Meiselas retrospective. I call it that because there is work from the most famous projects of her almost 40 year career on the walls and the accompanying catalogue is a weighty tome featuring beautifully reproduced photographs, essays and interviews, pages from her published books and all manner of notes and clippings which cover a lot of the work she has done so far.
